Things That Have Fizzled Lately

Some people get to blog about high-minded accomplishments and important milestones reached and things like that. All I have this week is fizzles. Nothing big enough to deserve an OMG! or even a You Won't Believe What Happened! Just unremarkable, pedestrian fizzles.

I thought life might get exciting on Thursday when the actual Weather Station Mobile Broadcast Truck came to town, parked in a likely spot, set up their cameras, and then everyone got out of the truck and looked up. I guess they were hoping for The Great Thundersnow Storm Of The Century. It fizzled of course. We had maybe three or four anemic thunderclaps, barely visible lightning and only about 6 inches of snow to complicate rush hour. Fizzle. I bet they were hoping for a repeat of the Great Thundersnow Storm of 1976 (or 1977 - something like that) when we had Great & Uncountable Thunder Booms while the Sky Lit Up Like The Fourth of July, heavy wet snow fell in Record Speeds, and in the following cold snap (thundersnow in MN is always followed by below zero freezes) hundreds of cars were frozen to the city streets as the super-saturated snow turned into a city-wide hockey rink. I remember that storm well. People who were so unfortunate as to be parked in low spots couldn't use their cars for days. TV stations ran with advice on how to chip your car out of the thundersnow without damaging your tires. It was very entertaining.

Now for Friday's Fizzle. On Fridays, Mr Swami usually brings home some take-out for our supper. Usually he brings Chinese - which I just love. However, during our recent litle mini-vacation I took Mr Swami to lunch at Ruby Tuesday, which as you know has pretty good entrees and a decidedly lovely salad bar. They also have a take-out menu, which we took. So Friday Mr Swami decided to bring home Ruby Tuesday. I had a lot of hesitations in letting Mr Swami build me a salad. Really, a salad bar salad is such a personal thing - but I decided to see what would happen. I requested the Turkey Minis Combo, which includes the salad bar.

Fizzling disaster. First off - Mr Swami didn't get home until after 7 pm - so I was starving. In my unseemly haste to warm up my minis I tried to scoot the box into the microwave while Mr Swami was standing kind of in front of it. (This is Mr Swami's favorite place to stand in the kitchen - blocking the microwave, the door and the cutlery drawers all in one fell swoop.) Mr Swami unexpectedly backed up while I was doing my tricky reach-around move. The take-out carton was bumped and totally collapsed (cheap POS!) causing my food to all fall. My two mini burgers fell into the cat's water dish. Splash! My french fries were scattered across the cat food dish, the cat water dish and the floor. Crapiola! All I had to eat for the hot portion of my meal were those french fries we could scoop up in ten seconds from the just-washed kitchen floor. My Fizzle Fries. And they weren't even hot by the time all the excitement died down. As for the salad? Never let Mr Swami build you a salad, that's all I have to say on that! He picks only the weird stuff and jumbles everything together in a very unnatural & messy way. I ate less than half of it. Everything looked creepy.

So guess what I'm supposed to eat today for my lunch? Hah! A PB & J sandwich never looked so good to me before.

Stupid fizzles.

Hangin' With Mr S

Mr Swami has a four day vacation this week, so we are just hanging together, going for lunch, going on short road trips and doing a couple fo house projects. Including (finally!) carrying the last couple of boxes of Christmas stuff into the basement. Swami doesn't carry heavy boxes up & down stairs anymore. :)

Yesterday, just for fun we drove around Lake Pepin. I always enjoy stopping at this Historical marker for Fort St Antoine, which is on the Wisconsin side.
I think you can click on the pic and make it big enough to read. Anyway, at this site in 1869 (back when Wisconsin & Minnesota were the wild, wild West) a French explorer and diplomat named Nicholas Perrot took possession of all lands from this point to all points west in the name of Louis the XIV. In the summer you can vaguely see the outline of the original fort building, although now a railroad bed runs close by, and the actual site appears to be owned by some guy with a small very downscale house (is shack an acceptible word?) who feeds a couple of steers from the back of a dead pick-up truck. Anyway, until the Louisiana Purchase Fort St Antoine and several other later, smaller forts on the Mississippi held the West in the name of France.

We did a driveby of the National Eagle Center in Wabasha MN. We didn't go in because the place was just chock-a-block with people & their binoculars, watching the bald eagles. As the ice on the Mississippi melts, eagles follow the melt North to their breeding grounds. We saw quite a few eagles. The ones who weren't hunting didn't mind sitting on the shore and posing for pictures.

We also stopped at Lake City MN, which is where water-skiing was invented back in 1922.

We had brunch on the Veranda at the St James Hotel in Red Wing MN. This photo is from their website:

Tomorrow I take a break from the vacation to go to the dentist. Stupid dentist appointment made 6 months ago!

Random Update #22

1. These are my Valentines Day flowers. I didn't think to take the photo until a few days after I got them. The lilies kind of took it over, but bouquet was 6 roses and 3 lily stems - 2 lilies per stem.

2. We had Chinese for Vday supper, from LeeAnn Chin. Mr. Swami really prefers to eat at home so we he brought home take-out.

3. I love my pool time! Only at the end of the first week I thought I was getting chlorine poisoning or something. I showered & showered after swimming but still smelled like a chemical factory. Then I started tasting it and felt funny in my tummy - but that went away. I think it was an hysterical pool allergy.

4. Three of the 4 public toilets I used last week had those ginormous roll holders that are mounted low to the ground and so enclosed that you can't reach the stupid paper if it is breaken off up inside the thing. Which it always does. Tg I always have kleenex in my purse!

5. Tom is working late tonight - so couscous for supper!

6. I have decided to give at least 1/2 of everything in my closet and armoire to Goodwill. While digging around in the back of the armoire I found a couple of cool shirts that I forgot I even had. I had so much stuff crammed in that I never really did reach the back of the bottom in there. I should post a pic of my 1890s armoire sometime. It's really lovely!

7. Yesterday Mr Swami brought home a little chocolate dessert cake which was so moist and perfect that it proves there really is a god.

8. We have to pay for more of my December hospital adventure bill than I thought so I will not be getting a new sofa this spring. I miss Medica. They were better than Blue Cross Blue Shield.

9. If I am sick of Gordon Ramsey then why am I watching Ramsey's F Word on BBC?

10. I am not a natural at Bridge - but I am getting there. On Thursday the "girls" at my table are going to bring a sandwich, stay after the class and just play for a while. Even Anita The Cheat-ah, as I now think of her.

11. I don't dress like the rest of the Bridge ladies. They wear pastel-colored sweaters and fuzzy sweatshirts with cute little critters and sayings on them. I wear black and tie-dye and long-sleeved teeshirts with horses on them. I don't think I'll change my style.

12. My morning paper told me that shoulder pads are coming back. I had a nice laugh & flashback. Nothing says "fashion victim" like a set of over-sized shoulder pads. You people who were not wearing power suits in the early 80s have so much to look forward to.

13. Thirteen is a Baker's Dozen. My new favorite bakery has a Bakers Dozen Club. For every 12 cups of coffee or 12 loaves of bread that you buy, you get the thirteenth one free.

Should I apologize?

In my Bridge class yesterday I think I may have spoke before I thought it through.

We are just learning, no? So the games we play at this point are more or less all practise games. We talk more than we should about what is going on on the table. We can ask the teacher person for advice on what to bid, what card to play next, etc. So yesterday during a practise game one of my opponents wanted to play her king of spades but she was worried that I might have the king. At this point, her partner (my other opponent) said "She (meaning me) doesn't have any spades."

I was totally stunned and immediately said, very loudly and with multiple exclamation points "YOU LOOKED AT MY HAND!!!!!" Everyone in the room looked at her, lol.

I was truly shocked and it just burst out of me. It was only a practise game. If she had asked me to show her my hand and my partner agreed I might have even shown it to her. Realy, I guess it was not that big a deal. But to just look at my cards in stealth? Totally shocked me. Swami does not cheat at cards. So I called her out.

Was I out of line? Should I apologize to her or to the table? Because I have kind of labeled her. ( And yes - I pushed back a little from the table, and held my hand much more closely than before.)

Swimming today.
I hope nobody there pisses me off, lol.

Three New Things Update

1. Bridge is great fun. I love playing cards so I may do this for a while.

2. I like swimming! I bought a three month pass and got my individualized exercise program yesterday. Actually, it's more of an exercise in the water program than a swimming program since laps are not part of the course. No one laughed at me in my swimsuit, tg.

I haven't stumbled across Thing Three yet, but the year is still young.

We Have Dirt

Oh, lots of dirt. You know, showing through gaps in the melting snow. At long last our January thaw has arrived. We could still get 2 feet of snow in March but it's okay because the January thaw lets us remember what warmth is!

I have been majorly absent from my blog. I have two excuses. (1) All the cool kids are doing it - I mean not doing it, and (2) having a 'life' really interferes with your life, lol. Plus Mr Swami and I have started our weeklong Valentines Day / Wedding Anniversary celebration. Twenty-eight years - can you believe it? And he's still hott.

Swimming is going great. Bridge is quite cool although I don't have any Masters points yet. But soon. Very soon.

Tonight is chicken marinated in Italian dressing because I am unimaginative today and that's really easy. Tossed salad. Spinach fettucine with carrots & baby green peas in a quick Alfredo sauce. We bought a nine-inch diameter carrot cake at our local Kowalski's on saturday. Tonight we eat the last 2 slices. Mmmmmmmmmmm - I love carrot cake!

Groundhog Day Randoms

1. Today Minnesota's official ground hog, Minnehaha Mike was dragged from his official burrow near the shores of Gitchigumi where he promptly died of hypothermia while looking for his shadow. This means 16 more weeks of winter. Other states may have had other outcomes, but this is how it goes in Minnesota.

2. Superbowl was a good game. I just didn't like it when Springsteen looked right at me and told me to put down the guacamole! How did he know? Plus - he is not The Boss of me. We continued eating the guac.

3. I make good guacamole. The chicken white lasagna turned out really good too.

4. My Bridge league starts on Thursday. I have high hopes for fun!

5. My phones are dying. We have a base unit and 4 handsets. Two of the handsets have bitten the dust recently. We picked out a new system and put it into my Amazon shopping basket last night. By the time I ordered it this morning the price had gone down $10. I like when that happens! Free shipping of course.

6. My Christmas tree is still up. Not inside the house! We stick it into the snow outside and have an extra shrub for a few months. Eventually, we burn it in our 4th off July bonfire.

Six is all I've got.